Sea slugs cast a spell on me…and it all began with fake news. Well, semi-fake. Okay, it was actually two photographs, and the one that cast the spell wasn’t exactly fake, but it wasn’t of “the” sea slug. It was a vibrantly-colored red-tipped, black and white version of the same sea slug species taken underwater in all its …
Category Archives: Photography
Constitutional Rite
Mount Constitution, which tops out at 2,400 feet, is the highest point in the San Juan Islands. It’s located on Orcas, the largest of several hundred islands that make up the archipelago. ‘The name “Orcas” is a shortened form of Horcasitas, or Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, the Viceroy of Mexico who …
Beach Combing at Bowman Bay
Making my way over and between barnacled, blunt-edged rocks and boulders along the north shore of Bowman Bay, quiet clickings increase in proportion to my pace. Shore crabs in a dozen different colors drop from the rocks on which they rest as I pass by, then scurry to safety. It’s one of several super-low-tide days in …
Ten Books Islanders Ought to Read
Exploring Deception Pass by Jack Hartt This week, Jack Hartt’s new book Exploring Deception Pass was published. A recent Whidbey News Times Article by Ron Newberry on the subject (State park manager shares tales and insight) suggests, “When one of Washington’s most breathtaking state parks is part of your everyday life for 12 years, you tend to …
On Golden Frog
Like the sirens to Odysseus, the frog chorus beckons me. From dusk to dawn I hear the call, pause, perk up my ears, wander towards the pond. Within a tiny plot of land, less than a tenth of an acre, an amphibian-friendly habitat exists where adults reproduce, eggs hatch, turn into tadpoles, finally form frogs. …
Rookery Dookery Dock
In a small patch of March’s Point in Anacortes is a big secret: a heron rookery, also known as a heronry. Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve claims, “The heron colony on March’s Point is believed to be the largest nesting area for Great Blue Herons in all of Western North America. Herons have nested at …
Eaglemania
Bald eagles are found only in North America. In Washington state, “The early summer bald eagle population when white settlers first arrived in Washington may have been around 8,800…Persecution, the cutting of forests, commercial exploitation of salmon runs, and finally the use of DDT reduced the state’s population to only 104 known breeding pairs by 1980…The population …
“All That the Rain Promises and More”
A barred owl’s call lured me into the woods yesterday evening near Heart Lake in the Anacortes Forest Lands. “Who cooks for you. Who cooks for you all,” provides the correct pattern of this species of owl’s call, but it doesn’t do justice to the super soft, spectacular sound. I grabbed my camera and headed out …
Wild About the Islands’ Flowers
Two years ago, I came upon a plant while doing what else, running, on the Lighthouse Point trail in Deception Pass State Park. I had never seen the flower before but suspected it was an orchid. I was right. It was a Calypso bulbosa, common name: Fairy slipper orchid. From that day forward, this plant …
Deception Pass Bridge
According to a December 6, 2014, article in the Whidbey News Times, Deception Pass State Park still most-visited state park; 2014 a record year, a whopping 2.7 million persons visited the park this year! Those who did, at most traversed, and at least photographed (likely both) the Deception Pass Bridge. In the parking lot at the south …
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